The Wooden Star

Quotes

1. The pull of fashion has always been that of the stampeding herd.

   p. 224

2. 

   It had taken a couple of billion years to produce me. In that couple of billion years, I had millions upon millions of ancestors. Slime-like ancestors, jelly-like ancestors, water-breathing ancestors, air-breathing ancestors, ancestors that floated, that swam, that crawled, that ran, that climbed, that finally walked. And all of those ancestors, no matter how different, had one thing in common.

   They had survived long enough to have descendants. Other species didn’t and their lines were extinct, bare bones in rock strata. But no matter how scarce food got, no matter what enemies they faced, what unprecedented natural upheavals they had to adjust to, my ancestors somehow managed to pull through, and have offspring. That’s how I happen to be here.

   p. 51

3. 

   “Creatures trained in warfare are what he calls ‘philosophically anti-life.’”

   p. 110

4. 

   The delegate returned to tell his countrymen that the Americans, always notorious for their madness, had finally specialized in cretinism.

   p. 66

5. 

   Scrabbling like mad at their beloved fence, the politicians tried to avoid taking a definite position on either side.

   p. 234

6. 

   “And, as a result of this examination,” the forked pink beard smiled down gently from above, “the specialists discovered that what you call the human race was nonviable. That is, while the individuals composing it had strongly developed instincts of self-preservation, the species as a whole was suicidal.”

   “Suicidal!” I found myself breathing up with rest.

   “Quite. This is a matter on which there can be little argument from the more honest among you. High civilization is a product of communal living and Man, in groups, has always tended to wipe himself out. In fact, a large factor in the development of what little civilization you do experience has been the rewards contingent upon the development of mass-destruction weapons.”

   p. 144

7. 

   Don’t be bitter, young sir. If you want to go on living you have to be alert. And you can’t be alert and bitter at the same time.

   p. 89

8. 

   People quoted Henry Dorselblad’s indictment of modern society: “Women needed the law’s special protection when they were legally inferiors of men. Now they have equality and special protection. They can’t have both!”

   p. 231

That’s all the quotes.

8 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more